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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, Dr. Kamal After. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you. Alhamdulillah, another Ramadan has reached us. Another opening and an invitation to grow to elevate ourselves. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala allow us the opportunity to make the most of this month's blessings. Inshallah with that intention, I have created a series of four podcasts, taking this month as an opportunity to recalibrate you are as a human being and who you are as a Muslim. And by recalibrate I mean elevate. Ramadan invites you to expand your capacity. It is this rare window of opportunity where the environment and the whole system organizes itself to accelerate your elevation. You start to see how much of your life runs on impulse and how powerful you are when you interrupt those impulses. I want to use this momentum of less distractions and the change of the body's rhythm and the momentum of your motivation to create a meaningful change in your mental wellness this month, inshallah. Ramadan increases your capacity as a human. It helps you see what you're capable of more than what you usually give yourself credit for. Worship in its highest form is measured by the quality of intention behind it. It is measured by what your consciousness set point is that you're operating from. The higher that set point, the highest the quality of human being you are, and the highest of the quality of the worship you engage with, inshallah. Being psychologically tethered to hardship means that your consciousness set point is still calibrated to a survival primal brain mechanism. In this state you are expecting struggle subconsciously, and you interpret all of the neutral events of the life through the lens of scarcity or injustice. In this state, one challenge or the history of a challenge becomes proof to you that ease is not written for you, and all the time you call it realism and factual. And sometimes in faith communities it's even interpreted as humility, but all it is is a state of unrefined perception. Without upgrading your operating system, your worship becomes endurance, and your prayers and your fast feel like a burden of obligation. At this set point, hardship might have been real and maybe factual, but the way you're relating to it by your nervous system has not been upgraded. So this Ramadan, my invite for you is to upgrade your operating system. And that does not mean that you will not face hardship, it just means that you're changing your relationship to it. You will be able to hold difficulty without letting it define you as your identity. And this is where you can experience pain without building a permanent narrative around it. May Allah protect us all from difficulty and hardship. Ramadan is meant to elevate your capacity so that any hardship does not imprison your perception. While some of us might currently be practicing Ramadan is as an exercise to increase your tolerance for suffering. What happens when your whole operating system upgrades is that you no longer tether to difficulty as if you're anchored in it for the rest of your life. You relate to difficulty as if it's something you need to navigate through. So what I'm gonna do through the series of these podcasts is make these concepts more available and more understandable to you. I'm going to be coming back to this concept of consciousness set point. And in this month's series, I'm going to be talking a lot about this consciousness set point, which in my coaching program I measure with an SQ score, a soulful intelligence quotient, which is kind of like an IQ score, but not the same thing. In my coaching program, how I describe this is where you fall and your SQ score at any given point will tell me where your consciousness set point is. Raising the state, raising that set point is the skiatunafs. This is the highest form of worship because as a downstream effect of raising your consciousness set point raises the quality of all of your acts of worship. Ramadan is an opportunity for us to increase your SQ score, to elevate your consciousness set point, to purify the nafs actively, to reset your nervous system. Let's treat this month as a hard spiritual and neurological reset. And yes, the opportunity is there for you to accumulate good deeds as much as possible. And there is an opportunity for you to become available to be living at the higher set point. I'm going to prove to you through these series of podcasts is that elevating your consciousness set point is erbada. So consciousness set point is the level of your internal operating system. Raising that set point, upgrading the software of your operating system counts as worship. What those actions look like practically, how regulation, refinement, and upgrading your meaning making machine is the essence of your worship, that's what we're going to be talking about in the next few episodes. So Ramadan overall asks for a lot of awkward acts of worship, and the reason behind it is to elevate us as a human being, to raise our set point of consciousness. It'll be sad if we do a lot more acts but remain vibrating at the same low set point. By definition, this consciousness set point is the default internal level from which you perceive, interpret, and respond to life. This is the baseline state that your nervous system returns to under rest and stress. This set point determines how you interpret hardship. It determines how you interpret your acts of. It determines what feels normal in relationship. Whether your kadr feels abundant or constricting is dependent on this set point. It literally determines everything. This consciousness set point is not your circumstance. It is the baseline from which you interpret your circumstance. This is the level of awareness that you habitually operate from. This is the set point of the quality of thoughts you bring to a situation. This determines what becomes real to you out of the infinite possibilities that exist for you in your Qadr because you have no knowledge of what your Qadr holds. Your consciousness set point would determine what will unfold based on your expectation. So if I haven't given enough clarity or enough definitions to you, your internal set point of consciousness is your operating system. This is the energetic baseline, your wavelength. This is the signature that you emit that people otherwise interpret as your personality. Or you yourself might interpret as your personality. This is the perceptual level, and again, this is what I call your soulful intelligence quotient, your SQ. So when you choose to work with me, you will get very used to this term SQ. This measures your consciousness set point. This is a literal score that I provide. It measures the wavelength that you're living at, your default mode of operation. When something difficult happens, like a delay or a perceived criticism, a conflict or a disappointment, or if you're facing some sort of ambiguity or uncertainty, your first internal meaning assignment reveals to me what your SQ score is. SQ reflects where your nervous system returns to without effort. This happens to be your baseline, and this can be raised and decreased. Without any effort on your part towards conscious reevaluation of your thoughts, your consciousness set point is constantly dropping. So the scale I give is the SQ scale goes all the way up to a hundred, and to keep it simple we divide it into above fifty and below fifty. Overall, 75 is the maximum score you can get, and I will explain why. But low SQ is a collection of not so much of your best moments, and high SQ is a collection of your best moments. The SQ score below 50, this is where your unconscious operating level set point is low. One difficulty has a very high chance of becoming your whole identity. This is where your relationship feels heavy and toxic and other overall feels very restrictive. When your SQ score is below fifty, you are living primarily from your survival coding. Your nervous system is reactive and all of your thoughts feel true simply because they're there, or simply because they're repetitive and loud. In this state, you're not in a position to observe your thoughts. You are living in a state where your thoughts appear factual. You interpret events globally instead of specifically, meaning you provide the same blanket statements to the difficulty of the past as it relates to the future. In this state there's little or no separation between stimulus and your reaction. Your fluctuations and your mood determine what meaning you assign to something. You feel controlled by your circumstance, by the people, by different outcomes, and at this set point, or actually at any other set point for that matter, you're not unintelligent. You are unregulated, and there's a huge difference between the two. At this low set point, there's no moment to moment insight, and any accountability into your methodology feels like a threat to you because it feels like a jab at your identity. Also at this low set point, you're skeptical of anything that carries a promise of healing. Because healing is novel to you, it feels remote, it is new and unfamiliar. You're not actively choosing your interpretations, rather they're choosing you. If you are here at this level of existence, you're not able to separate yourself from other people's emotional states. You're living a very enmeshed life. You take responsibility for other people's emotions, including your mother, your father, your spouse, your children. You feel like their pain is your pain, and any of their opinion is true about you. At this level, you might be functioning, but you are not thriving. And I want to remind you that I'm not giving you this information so you can be in more despair. I'm giving you this information so you can increase your awareness, so you can label everything, because clarity around a problem is half of the problem solved. Now having said that, most of the world lives at a low consciousness set point SQ way below 50. This happens because most people have never been taught that their mind requires training. But if they do know their mind requires training, then they haven't found the exact resource on how to train it effectively. So my program is specifically designed for Muslim women exactly to help you gain this skill. And this Ramadan is the perfect opportunity for you to commit to this level of training. Okay, so now for the next level of SQ. When your set point is elevating, when your SQ score is approaching fifty or going beyond that, the same difficulties become specific rather than global, and you tolerate uncertainty better. The same qadr starts to feel expansive, not because anything in your circumstance has changed, but because your perception has changed. This is where awareness begins. You can see your thoughts as being thoughts instead of being completely fused with them. You notice when you're spiraling, even if you can't always stop it, you recognize patterns, you begin to question narratives that are constricting, like this is just how my life is. At these scores of fifty or more, regulation becomes more possible for you. Awareness is there, but sometimes patchy, it's a hit or miss. Sometimes you pause, sometimes you can't, and you react anyway. This is where worship starts to feel more intentional and less automatic. Your hushroom starts to increase. You start to understand that your perception is state dependent, and you're not constantly a victim of your state of emotions and moods. During this transition period, however, under stress you may still drop into old survival patterns. And this is where effort matters the most. You're gaining momentum, you're building capacity, you're strengthening your discernment. Your tolerance of discomfort is increasing, so keep up with the practice. Don't get discouraged if you face a setback. You might logically know how all of this phenomena will unfold and you might not be able to stop it, and that is okay. This upward momentum is the practice of this gia, and this is what I'm calling you towards this Ramadan. And at this set point you are well on your way. Now, going towards the scores of SQ that are fifty or higher and closer to seventy five, this is the optimal operating level for this life. This is as high as you're gonna go when you're functioning in this dunya. Because in this world we cannot live a negativity free existence. That belongs to Janna. An SQ score of hundred, a consciousness set point where you don't face any negativity or difficulty is only achievable in Janna. In this world the human mind is designed to detect threat, wrongness and error, and all of that is by beautiful design. Some negativity will always exist, and that is rightly so, because if you feel anger at discrimination or despair at health challenges, these and many other situations like this are not there for you to feel good about. These are there so you can appropriately choose a negative emotion to respond with, as long as you don't dwell in that negative emotion. Feeling good through a challenge is pathologic. You don't want to feel good all the time. And if that is your pursuit, then chances are that you will fall into some addiction or another to mask all of the pain. This is what makes the highest SQ set point for this world to be seventy-five, even though the scale goes all the way up to a hundred. But at this score of seventy-five, negativity does not dominate your perception. You hold hardship but you don't globalize it, you don't catastrophize it. You experience disappointment, but you don't make it about yourself or about your identity or about your future. At this score you are at your highest capacity to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty, and you will give the same ambiguity a meaning that will support you. At this set point for you in your life, there is a consistent gap between a trigger and your response. Your nervous system is regulated enough to interpret Qadr in your favor. Now notice that I'm never saying that your qadr will be free of hardships or that your qadr will change. What I'm saying is that you will use that same qadr in your favor. You will not expect life to be free of difficulty, but you also do not interpret that difficulty as a personal punishment or your personal moral failure. Your faith and acts of worship at this set point are connected and grounded. You're remembering the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and you're remembering his watchful eye, and you're remembering the balance between the two. This is the life of Yassan. This is where you're able to create boundaries from love and safety even in the most toxic situations, and your relationships will start to reorganize around your coherence. At this level of SQ, you're able to separate yourself from the toxicity even if it is happening in your close proximity. You're able to live your life in the same spaces as everyone else, and you're not affected by their emotional state. You do not internalize their projections towards you, and you do not make their opinions about your own shortcomings. At this level you are not free from pain. You are just free from being ruled by it. At this level, you're choosing the pain of growth, the pain of taking a risk of loving someone and having your heart broken, the risk of visibility, the risk of starting a business, and you're choosing the pain of the learning curve that any new opportunity brings you. At this set point you're vibrating at the highest emotional frequency. Your SQ measures your wavelength, your energetic baseline of your interpretation. If you live at a low wavelength, you attract or tolerate chaotic dynamics and relationships, you interpret any and all behavior as hostile, and you are emotionally recruitable, meaning you're easily destabilized. If you live at a higher wavelength, you're less available for fragmentation. You're not easily rage baited, you experience dignity all the time, and you interpret your hardships that provide you a favorable outcome. Your SQ score is the score that tells you which wavelength you're currently operating at. For all intentional purposes, I want you to visualize SQ as a scale that has a vertical meter with a ball that gives you the reading of the score, going from zero to a hundred, and this ball is fluctuating, it's not fixed, but this ball represents your consciousness set point, your default interpretation level, your wavelength, your mode of operation. This is the ball that represents the stability of the system at any given point, and it does not stay still. It is either being pressurized upwards through internal intentional refinement, otherwise it is always slowly losing pressure and dropping if you don't engage in this internal refinement. If you disengage from your efforts of the skia, with your passivity, the process is not going to stay stable, it is going to deflate the system. Imagine this system is given stability through internal pressure, and this ball is what measures the pressure in the system. Your thezgia, your active purification, your regulation, your disciplined perception, your constant efforts to interrupt your distorted narratives is what provides pressure to the system. It gives the system stability. When you actively work on how you interpret life, when you challenge your story that the mind automatically provides you, you are pumping pressure into that system, you're stabilizing it. The ball is rising in the meter, your SQ score is increasing, and you're operating from a higher level. Now imagine that you stop this process. You don't do anything else dramatic, you just simply disengage from the intentional refinement. You stop examining your interpretations, you stop regulating yourself consciously, and you just let your thoughts run unchallenged. What I'm trying to prove to you is that the system cannot tolerate passivity. What will happen in that case is that the pressure is going to continue to slowly release. You'll think that the pressure in the system is staying steady, because outwardly think might not be seeming that they're changing so much, but the system is losing pressure. And this does not happen because you're actively engaging in sin. Or it doesn't happen because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is punishing you. It happens because you're not actively refining yourself. You're not contributing to the stability of the system. And your active contribution looks like many different things. It can look like professional help. Coaching. It can look like your own refinement practices. And to clarify, most women are on this journey and you do want to contribute towards the stability of the system. You do want to raise your SQ. But in my experience, most women are using methods that are not based in Islam and that are mostly shallow, which might get you to a higher raised set point, but it might take longer and a lot more effort. When you're in this journey through other methods, you can see the most life-changing IG quote that shakes you to your core, but then you're either not applying that or that application is not long lasting. Without your active involvement in your purification of the nafs, the system naturally depressurizes because neglect has gravity, and that includes you not being able to find the right resource yet. For this SQ meter, there is no middle ground of passivity, there's no cruise control. The pressure must be preserved by the constant refinement of your consciousness. This is you actively engaging in your daskiya, either through worship, presence, regulatory exercises, body-based mechanisms, somatic exercises, disciplined meaning making. With all of this, you're maintaining the pressure. And from that stable place you can continue to increase it gradually and intentionally. And I've seen all of the time in my program where this set point reaches 75, which is optimal for this point for a human being. We're not chasing perfection, we're not creating a negativity free existence, we're just helping our mind to work in our favor. This imagery that I'm presenting to you matters because it helps you internalize the truth around your SQ score and all of this dynamic, because this is going to influence you on a daily basis. Every interpretation, every thought, every judgment either preserves pressure or releases it. All of your conscious effort either pumps the ball upwards or the lack of it allows it to sink. And what level you're able to maintain your score at will determine how your life unfolds, even when the circumstances themselves never change. With that I pray to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, Ya Allah, as you have allowed us to witness another Ramadan, allow us to witness elevation within ourselves, raise our consciousness set point, refine our nafs, strengthen our nervous system so that we interpret our Qadr in our favor with dignity and trust in your design. Yallah, protect us from living at a low operating level, protect us from distorted perception, grant us the discipline to engage in Tazkiya, inward and outward, increase our soulful intelligence to increase our capacity. Anchor us in a life of Isan. Ya Allah, allow this Ramadan to be a true reset it is meant to be. A month of elevation, refinement, and getting closer to you more than ever before. Amin Yarabul Amin. Please keep me in your daas, I will talk to you guys next time.
